BOOM.
There wasn’t even time to jump off the crane.
The explosion hit—
But when my systems cleared, I realized the crane hadn’t been destroyed.
The Tyrant tank’s turret had.
The blast had torn it clean off the hull and thrown it across the workshop like scrap.
The dim space brightened as firelight spread. At the far end of the assembly bay, a massive gate had opened. A Plando Devastator tank was rolling in, slow and steady, its armor lit by muzzle flashes. Several Bloodthirsters swarmed around it, firing and lunging with feral aggression.
The battle flipped instantly.
Caught between our fire and the Devastator’s assault from behind, the Tower Clan units were wiped out in minutes.
The sniper, however, vanished.
As if it had evaporated into the smoke, it was simply gone.
When the last Tower Clan frame fell, the surviving members of my team moved through the open gate—and stepped out into open air.
We were at the rift floor.
So this level had been the bottom of Zone A.
Only then did I have the space to look at the public channel.
While we had been trapped in the assembly bay, an Umbral team had seized Zone A’s master control chamber. Father had gained administrative access to Zone A’s internal systems. He immediately opened every blast door.
Medium and heavy units that had been waiting outside surged into Zone A in a steel flood.
Zone A was, for all practical purposes, secured.
Zone B was not.
Second Squadron’s progress there was only about halfway. Zone B’s defenses were stronger, and its terrain was more complex. The public channel showed another problem as well: B Zone had encountered a terrifying opponent. Any squad that became isolated was being slaughtered by a robot wielding a transparent long blade.
Transparent blade…?
No.
Not now.
The rift floor below the fortress was a frenzy of logistics. Supply ships and transports filled the limited flat ground. Several Groundborers still thundered, throwing sand and rock into growing piles. And in the center of the basin, engineering bots were completing the structure I feared most—
A signal amplifier tower.
It was in its final phase. Less than an hour remained before activation. Once online, Father’s signal would reach every corner of the Doomsday Fortress.
There would be no offline zones.
No escape.
Time was running out, and I still hadn’t found a single clean opening.
Father ordered all surviving units to resupply from the supply ships at the rift floor in preparation for the final penetration of Zone C. Scout-orb reports indicated that the Tower Clan had massed large forces at the boundary between Zones A and C.
Another brutal fight was waiting.
While we resupplied, Father reorganized the remaining two thousand-plus units and prepared a direct assault into Zone C.
Then an anomaly appeared at one of the Groundborer sites.
Engineering bots swarmed the machine.
A moment later, the public channel updated with the reason.
The Groundborer had breached the ceiling of Zone C.
Father altered the deployment immediately. Our forces would split in two: one group would push from Zone A into Zone C as planned, while another would enter through the Groundborer’s tunnel, seize key positions, and split the Tower Clan defense.
Speed was critical.
The moment the drill broke through, the resonance disruptor would fail. The Tower Clan would know our precise entry point. If they deployed first, the tunnel would become a kill box.
The drill bit retracted. The Groundborer left behind a vertical pipe two meters in diameter.
Scout orbs went first. After they confirmed the passage was clear, we descended in organized waves on steel cables.
At the bottom was a medium-sized room—small in footprint, but tall in height. We switched to night vision and fanned out to check corners. The 3D map of Zone C overlaid my mind; the coordinates suggested we were near the center of the top level.
There was only one sealed gate.
The Flamecallers forced it open.
Compared to the thick doors of Zone A, this gate was thin—clearly not designed for serious defense. It took only seconds to cut.
Beyond it lay a wide corridor, silent as a grave.
The Tower Clan hadn’t redeployed yet.
Scout orbs poured out into the hallway and split left and right.
As more units continued to descend behind us, the scout orbs sent an alert.
Multiple hostile signatures ahead—closing fast.
There were no branches in the corridor. One scout orb reported that one direction ended in a dead end: a few empty rooms. That meant we would have to hold here, buying time for the main force to arrive.
Units already inside moved into defensive positions at speed.
The corridor was wide and offered no cover, but Father deployed a dense line of micro mobile turrets. They unfolded into two rows along the hallway. Behind them, Exilers locked shields into a wall. Flamecallers positioned behind the shield line, burners aimed forward. Behind them, arriving units raised electromagnetic rifles.
Layered like that, any blind charge would be slaughter.
But the red dots on the map multiplied at a geometric rate.
Dozens.
Hundreds.
Now more than a thousand—and still increasing.
It wasn’t just their numbers.
It was their speed.
The map overlaid a countdown.
Ten seconds to contact.
We chambered weapons.
I could already hear it now—a faint skittering from ahead, growing louder, denser, like rain on metal.
It wasn’t the sound of robots.
Spider mines.
The mobile turrets opened fire first, chewing through the leading edge as the mines poured in. For a few seconds, it held.
Then the tide rose.
A black wave of spider mines flooded the corridor, crawling over the floor, up the walls, across the ceiling, rushing toward us with no fear and no pause.
At Father’s command, we opened fire together.
The spider mines came endlessly. Wreckage piled up. Mines climbed over their dead and leapt toward our line, trying to break into the formation.
They couldn’t.
Our fire was too dense.
When the swarm entered burner range, the Flamecallers released flame in unison, igniting thousands of mines—and the stacked remains beneath them.
A wall of fire rose at the far end of the corridor.
For a moment, the fire barrier halted the assault. We lowered our rifles slightly, barrels radiating heat.
Then smoke grenades arced over the flames.
Thick smoke spilled across the hallway and swallowed our vision. I cycled through scan modes, but the interference and density left me blind.
Tower Clan robots had reached the battle.
In response, the Flamecallers rotated their arm-mounted drum magazines and fired multiple gauss grenade rounds into the smoke.
Explosions shook the corridor.
But the smoke hid the results.
When the blasts ended, the enemy went silent.
Had we wiped them out?
A scout orb activated a powerful searchlight and flew over our line into the haze. We watched through its shared feed. It passed over a mound of spider-mine wreckage and scanned.
Even its spotlight couldn’t cut far.
Within its limited view, there was no movement.
The scout orb continued forward until it reached clear air beyond the smoke.
Still nothing.
No enemies.
No Tower Clan wreckage.
They had used the smoke as cover to withdraw cleanly.
Father ordered us to dismantle the defense line and continue advancing.
Only then did I realize how much our numbers had grown. While we fought, units had been descending continuously from the rift floor. Now the corridor was packed with Plando frames shoulder to shoulder.
We left the slowest mobile turrets behind and pushed forward. I moved with the front ranks, stepping over spider-mine carcasses and into the silent stretch ahead.
We had advanced barely a hundred meters when the next anomaly hit.
The lead Flamecaller’s head exploded.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Before anyone could even react.
A heartbeat later, the corridor behind us erupted.
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—BOOM—
A chain of explosions swallowed the passage we had come through, turning it into a corridor of fire.
I spun in shock and watched our retreat route disappear in the blast light.